


Energy Remembers

by winterseaspray



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen, Sisters, remembering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 11:16:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterseaspray/pseuds/winterseaspray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nita finds out her life has been TiVoed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Energy Remembers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LillyRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LillyRose/gifts).
  * Inspired by [30 Day OTP Challenge (Young Wizards), day 12: Making out](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/14584) by Diane Duane. 



> Happy Yuletide!

A young woman in jeans and a big floppy t-shirt sat staring at a book on her dining room table, a look of horror on her face. She had been sitting like this for several moments, as if shock had actually made her freeze. 

"Nita!" A voice called from another room, high pitched in annoyance. Nita didn't move, still transfixed by the book and what it said. 

"Nita!" the voice came closer, becoming more annoyed as it did so. "Where have you put the mustard?" Dairine appeared in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen.

Nita looked up at her little sister, who's concern for mustard was so utterly normal and irritating that it had actually gotten through her shock. "You ate it," she said. "With your last sandwich. Put it on the list for shopping this week."

Dairine looked at Nita critically, grey eyes inspecting her face as she stood in the door frame, a clean knife in the other. "What's the matter with you?" Dairine asked. "You look like you just saw a ghost."

Rapidly, Nita shut the book in front of her and looked away from her sister. "Nothing," Nita said. 

"Did you see a ghost?" Dairine asked, developing a quizzical look that was much too calculating for Nita's taste. "Cause you know Neets, if we've got ghosts, I want to deal with them. I've got important wizardries--"

"We don't have ghosts Dair."

"Then what did you see?" Dairine came closed, peering at Nita's manual as she did so. 

" _Nothing_." Nita pressed a hand over the cover of her manual, as if by doing so she could make it smaller and invisible. Of course, it didn't oblige this wish and remained obstinately the same size. For a small buckram bound library book, it felt like it was the size of the table considering what she had just read.

"Now why don't I believe that?" Dairine asked, cheerful. 

Nita glared at her sister and got up. "Nothing for you to worry about Dair."

"You sure, some wizardry not working?" Dairine asked. When had she gotten so tall? Nita remembered her little sister as always being a tiny little thing, but she'd hit a growth spurt recently, and suddenly she was almost Nita's height. If she kept going like this, she was going to be as tall as their mother had been. And lately Dairine was beginning to look so much more like their mother.

"No, everything's working fine," Nita said. "I just read something in there that I thought I had corrected for. Try remove the record function." She muttered this last, annoyed about the fact that the manual hadn't stopped recording.

Dairine frowned. "Well you can't do that."

" _What?_ " Nita asked. 

"What do you mean, 'what'?" Dairine asked, as if Nita's surprise was completely unwarranted and she was being ridiculous. "You know the mobiles are recording and storing all information in the universe. They've been going through _everything_ and picking it up. What's the point if you're removing it?"

The point is that no one else has to read about her sex life, Nita thought furiously, but she didn't really want to get into that with Dairine. Her sister might have grown up some recently, but that didn't mean that Dairine had stopped being a pain in the ass when it came to the facts of life. _At least Mom went through all this stuff with Dairine before she died. If she hadn't_ I _would have to do that. Imagine how embarrassing._

"I don't want it removed, but I don't want every person who has access to the manual to be able to read what I'm doing," Nita said. _Especially not my seniors. Or my sister. Or really anyone._

Dairine looked at Nita amused. "Is this cause you've been making out with Kit?"

" _What?!_ Did you read that in here? You little--"

"Relax Neets, I haven't read it. I don't know why I would want to," Dairine sat down at the table and put the knife down. "Its privacy encoded."

Nita frowned and sat down again. And then a thought occurred to her. "Wait, the Powers have all sorts of privacy issues with almost everything, so why would they let the mobiles see and record all information in the universe? And how do they do it?"

"Well," Dairine said, and then she started talking excitedly and within minutes, Nita was lost. Something about string structure was involved, and having the manual on her, but also how mass and energy remembered being something else and what it had done, and then she got much, much more technical. 

Nita waved a hand at Dairine as she started to discuss the subatomic particle theory that would indicate the placement of electrons without having the Heisenberg Uncertainty requirement. "Dair, you've lost me."

Dairine sighed. "Look, the basic thing you have to know is that unless you have the _right_ permissions, basically meaning if you were present for the actions, then you can't get at the material. But, it has been archived."

"But how do the mobiles get it if they don't have the right--" Dairine was starting to look like she was going to go on about more complex nature of the universe, and while Nita was all for learning about it, she didn't want a lesson from her little sister on the subject. "--Nevermind. So you're saying there are recordings of everything we've done in our lives that we can see if we were there?"

"Yeah," Dairine said.

Nita paused, considering. "Can you show me how to do it?"

Dairine gave Nita a wicked look. "Voyerism?"

"What? Ew, no. I was thinking that we could look to see something that we all did as a family together, before--" there was only a second of hesitation. It had been years since their mother had died, but it still got to her. "--Mom died."

Dairine's expression changed to a thoughtful look.

 _I can show you how,_ Bobo said quietly at the back of her mind.

 _Thanks Bobo, but I think I've actually stumbled on something good here._ Nita watched her sister.

"Sure," Dairine said. Spot spidered into the room, and Dairine started to show Nita how to set up the wizardry. It wasn't that hard, and with both of them there, they got the display working relatively quickly.

"That was a nice thought," Dairine said at some point. "I wouldn't've thought of it."

"Yeah well..." Nita didn't really have words. So they sat quietly, watching the display for a long time because it was easier than talking about it.

Afterwards, Dairine went out, and Nita was left thinking about the implications. Every second was being recorded and stored...

At least something good had come from this, she'd had a chance to talk to Dairine without arguing with her, which had been nice considering recently they had been having a hard time with it. Even if it meant that she had just discovered her entire life was now at the disposal of anyone who had been there. 

_Imagine if Ronan saw... or Kit._

_Maybe... it wouldn't be so bad..._ A small part of her thought, but Nita put it away quickly. she didn't think it would be a good idea. 

Not really anyways.


End file.
